6 comments to The Spokesmen 61 – Entries and Exits

Hi Spokesmen,
Love the podcast
I was listening today to the Feb 19th edition. I was interested about the comments about on board videos in vehicles. I regularly commute to and from work in the Waukesha WI area. One dark winter evening the Transit bus passed me within a foot…I was mad so I e mailed the Waukesha transit office to remind them of the 3 foot rule and there have been too many cyclist killed from behind and I did not want to be one of them…. and I got a response back they would review the bus video of that evening, conduct training and instruct drivers accordingly. Guess what the next week at the same time the bus passed me leaving about 10 feet clearance – I say wow good news….
I thought you could share this with your listeners of a bad news good news story.
Andrew Green

Hi David,
Thanks for your response
There was a very sad loss here in the area last October when an owner of a local bike shop, Jeff Littmann was killed one morning by a driver who claimed he was blinded by the morning sun and ran Jeff and a lady down – very sad.
So there have been too many of these kinds of accident in my area.
Again thanks for great podcasts with the Spokesmen and the FredCast
Andrew

I just completed a bike trip in Florida, riding with friends in the Gainesville/Ocala region. Fortunately, our rides were safe, beautiful, and challenging. The comments you made about deaths in Florida concerned me as I listened to your podcast during my drive to Florida. I have two thoughts.

First, if Florida is the most dangerous cycling state, perhaps national cycling advocacy groups should take aim at Floida as low hanging fruit. Certainly the state which depends so much on tourism would respond to negative publicity in a favorable way? After Florida sees a significant drop in fatalities, then advocacy groups could focus on the next state.

Second, regions like the horse country where we rode could promote cycling tourism. Signs marking cycling routes, cycling events, and advertising campaigns might help. This is a great
cycling area, which draws few tourists other than Gator fans and horse people.

I covered the story about the GPS recording used after an incident with a car and bicycle on my blog and on VeloReviews. On VeloReviews, Jeff Helfand even posted a recording showing a spike in his heart rate from his GPS during a near miss.